The second book? It’s coming along. Slowly. I write slowly. Wait, that’s not quite right. I write fairly quickly – I just think of what to write slowly.
I can tell you the title: Starcrossed. And I can tell you that it opens at a polo match. There was an era during Hollywood’s Golden Age when stars, studio heads and others in the movie industry were crazy for polo. There were something like 25 polo fields in the 1930s in the Los Angeles area. And my heroine, motion picture star Frankie Franklin, of course, plays.
Most of the fields are long gone, but one survives at Will Rogers Historic State Park, once the private ranch of America’s “poet lariat.” We visited on our 2022 research trip, and with the beautifully preserved ranch house, the stable and the polo field, we found our imaginations effortlessly swept back to the time when Will himself lived there on the ranch in Pacific Palisades. He had it built in the 1920s, and he lived there until his death in a plane crash in Alaska in 1935. We have his widow, Betty, to thank for its continued existence. She donated the ranch to the California State Parks in 1944.
2024 Deb McCaskey
A visit to Will Rogers State Historic Park takes you back to the 1930s.
It was his refuge, where he could entertain guests, and ride, rope, and play polo. Preserved in the park are the ranch house, the stable, a riding arena, and a regulation polo field where the Will Rogers Polo Club still plays from April to October. Trails wind through the hills high above Sunset Boulevard and offer hikers views of the ocean.
Rogers was the highest-paid entertainer in the early 1930s, and was a popular newspaper columnist as well as a movie and radio star. His skill with a rope was legendary; the small visitor center in the garage of the guest cottage shows film clips of some of his feats, such as throwing three lassos at once and roping a horse and its rider.
Rogers’ humor was topical, but also timeless. Consider: “I’m not a member of any organized political party. I’m a Democrat.” And: “Everything is changing in America. People are taking their comedians seriously and the politicians as a joke.”
The Rogers place provided inspiration in the Stardusted world for the ranch of Clay West, the singing cowboy who is Frankie Franklin’s best friend. In particular, I loved that you can see the polo field from the ranch house, and that the beautiful stable was, as Frankie says, like a “horse palace.”
After the tour we lingered and enjoyed the rolling lawns surrounding the house, where families with kids and dogs played.
Down on the polo field, two women’s teams faced off. Not being there as a reporter, but just to absorb the atmosphere, I didn’t get the teams’ names or who won, or any of that. In my mind, I was already seeing Frankie and her friends, galloping hell-bent up and down the field after the little white ball.
You can still see polo played at Will Rogers State Historic Park.
2024 Deb McCaskey
I wanted to move right into the ranch house the minute I walked in the door. Comfortable, filled with light, unpretentious, it’s about as close to a dream house as I could imagine. There’s a stone patio with a fireplace, and a line of rocking chairs on the front porch, where you can almost hear Will say, “Come on out and set a spell.”
The ranch house, front porch and patio — inviting:
2024 Deb McCaskey
2024 Deb McCaskey
You can see the house’s interior on a guided tour; our guide was knowledgeable and enthusiastic about Rogers’s life and times. We were the only folks on that particular tour, and, as tour guides sometimes do, when the questions we were asking made it clear how enthusiastic we were to learn more, he added extra time, and stories.
Our guide seemed to have a particular interest in how much Rogers loved the”Good Old Oklahoma Beans” his sister served and the fact that Rogers described them as “kinder soupy.” It seemed to say to him, and to us, that no matter how much wealth and fame Will Rogers acquired, at heart he was still a down-to-earth Oklahoma cowboy.
The recipe for Good Old Oklahoma Bean — posted near the visitor center:
Deb McCaskey 